Coping With Deportation From The US

The USA is called a melting pot as it has people from around the world. Under the diversity visa (DV) programme, the USA admits around 55,000 people to its territory on an annual basis. Further, many people enter the USA illegally. During the Biden administration, there was the CBO One app, through which people from around the world could apply for asylum. So the USA is filled with people from various backgrounds: legal migrants, asylum-seekers and illegal migrants.

As soon as Donald Trump entered the White House for the second time on January 20, 2025, he signed several executive orders, including on immigration. Accordingly, the USA has tightened the noose around the immigration issue. The Trump administration has overhauled parts of the immigration system, including the processing and deportation of illegal migrants from the USA. This has resulted in the arrests, detentions or deportations of many illegal migrants. The US has deported some Nepali migrants illegally residing in the US. 

Illegal migrants

Some executive orders are aimed at expanding the scope of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), allowing the agency to arrest and detain illegal migrants in the USA. Raids on various areas such as educational institutions, hospitals and churches are being conducted to search for illegal migrants. One of the executive orders is concerned with expanding the programme relating to allowing the ICE to delegate authority to state and local police so as to intensify arrests of illegal migrants. The ICE has issued 1,445,549 deportation issues for undocumented migrants. 

The Trump administration has identified around eleven million illegal migrants to be deported. In the first phase, those undocumented migrants who entered the USA after June 24, 2015 and who have been served with deportation orders are targeted. Likewise, those migrants who are undocumented but hold temporary protect status (TPS) and who have committed offences are at risk of being deported. On the other hand, those who have requested asylum in the USA but have failed to show that they are genuine asylum-seekers are also in danger of being deported. 

The Trump administration has also halted the Biden programme of allowing in 30,000 on a monthly basis from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela on humanitarian grounds by cancelling the US refugee resettlement plan. On the other hand, the Trump administration has revived the policy launched during the first term of Trump, which the Biden administration had discontinued. In a similar vein, the Trump administration is to revive the Remain-in-Mexico policy, which was adopted during the first term of Trump. As per the policy, non-Mexican asylum-seekers are to wait in Mexico until their asylum-related claims are settled in the USA.  

The Trump administration has focused on mass deportations in line with its MAGA (Make America Great Again) programme, believing that such measures will make more and more jobs and other opportunities available to Americans. The Trump administration has also focused on border security. Many migrants enter the USA illegally through the US-Mexican border. The Mexican government has deployed an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the border in addition to the 2,500 already deployed there. The troops help the Border Patrol agents in monitoring human movements and in constructing barriers to stop migrants from entering the USA. In fact, border control is one of the missions of the Trump administration. 

It would be appropriate to mention that during the Biden administration too, as many as 1.5 million illegal migrants were deported from the USA, including 271,000 migrants in 2024 alone. During the Obama administration, 2.9 million deportations took place. The trend of illegal migration is continuing now. Those falling in the top deportation list include people from Mexico, El Salvador, India, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela. They are residing mainly in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. 

Dazzled by the glitter of the USA, many people from around the world tend to go to the country illegally. They often go there through Asian, African and South American routes. They pay hefty sums of money to brokers to enter the USA. So the Nepal government is screening the deportee migrants through the Immigration Office and the Human Trafficking Bureau of the Police. It is reported that many had entered the USA through the network of human traffickers or overstayed their visas. The human traffickers have a vast network. 

The Nepal government hopes to find out how the Nepali migrants had landed in the USA even without proper documents. If the network of human traffickers can be identified, it will be easy to investigate and bust the network. 

Dignity

There is no stopping the mass deportations. India says that it will cooperate with the USA in the process of mass deportations. Nepal has tacitly accepted the process. Other countries have also kowtowed before the US deportation orders against their citizens. In fact, what they want is that their citizens are deported with dignity, not in a manner that portrays them as criminals. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said, when their citizens were deported, that the USA could not treat Colombian migrants as criminals and that they needed to be treated with dignity. There are reports that illegal migrants are being treated with abuse such as by handcuffing them or detaining them.  

As a matter of fact, no one is allowed to reside in a foreign country without proper documents except when there is a mutual agreement between the two countries regarding staying or residing in each other’s country without documents such as between Nepal and India. It is also illegal to overstay one’s visa. Nevertheless, many people from poor countries are attracted to rich countries like the USA and tend to reside there illegally in a clandestine manner. This is a bad trend, which the Trump administration is hell-bent on uprooting. In a sense, Trump’s policy of deportation is sensible. 

(Maharjan has been regularly writing on contemporary issues for this daily since 2000.)